Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis are set to enter a boxing ring in Memphis, Tenn. on Saturday to decide the heavyweight championship of the world. The fight between the sport’s greatest menace and its reigning heavyweight champ will draw the attention of plenty of fans, including the rabid followers of the so-called “Sweet Science.” For their work, each fighter will take home at least $17.5 million.
Amazing, isn’t it? Mike Tyson, ex-convict, serial mauler, is still getting paid to fight. Some people will pay good money to be there. More people will pay to watch it on television.
To watch what? A squat ex-convict who has shown his greatest ability is to find new ways to get in trouble. Tyson shocks many people with his rude, crude and violent behavior out of the ring and still convinces many people to plunk down $54.95 for the opportunity to see more of it on closed-circuit television.
Tyson has fought only 18 rounds in the last three years, proving little about his boxing skills along the way. Yet people remain curious, much in the way they create a gapers block after a highway crash.
Many will turn out for this fight not to see if Tyson can box well. They will watch to see if he loses control and attempts to maim his opponent. He has promised even more than that. Tyson told reporters the other day that he doesn’t just want to defeat Lewis, he wants to end his life.
“My main objective is to be professional but to kill him,” he told a British newspaper reporter.
Ah, that’s what people want to hear.
So it has become with a man who broke into boxing as a reformed juvenile thug and cultivated an image as a boxer for the ages.
In 1987, he became the youngest undisputed heavyweight champion in history. He remains the only champion to defend his title three times in a single year.
Since then, his record has drawn some different distinctions. He spent three years in an Indiana prison for assaulting a teenage beauty pageant contestant. He was placed under a psychiatrist’s care for biting Evander Holyfield’s ears during a bout in 1997. In subsequent contests, his ring behavior has continued to slide; he knocked down a referee in one bout and punched two opponents after the bell in other fights.
Briefly, earlier this year, it appeared that Tyson’s fury might finally go unrewarded. The Nevada State Athletic Commission in February denied him a license to fight Lewis in Las Vegas, citing Tyson’s checkered past. Nevada made the right decision, even though it cost the region an estimated $100 million in tourism spending.
But Memphis stepped in and accepted the fight.
There are signs the public fascination with Tyson may finally be waning. Late in the week, only half of the 20,000 seats in Memphis’s Pyramid Arena had been sold. A half-empty arena might be enough to send Tyson–now entering the final stages of his prime fighting years–and the boxing industry a powerful message. It is not a `sweet science’ as practiced by Mike Tyson, it is nothing but violence rewarded with a paycheck.
